Are Donkeys good for breaking show cattle?

I'm wondering if donkeys are good for breaking show cattle. Ive heard stories of donkeys chewing off ears and drowning them in water. ???

It just depends on the individual donkey. After having two wild heifers (different years) and having them donkey broke, we were in love with the idea (it worked great), especially for sale calves that needed to be halter broke. So we decided to get one we thought would work. He was from a family that we knew and had a donkey for breaking, but he got so mean with the show cattle that if they went outside, he would almost chase them through the fence, bite, etc. We never even got a calf on him. He probably would have killed it. We had some friends that like to donkey break cattle and had a great donkey, but he even broke the calf's neck once, but I think it was a freak accident.

If you have a trusted person and donkey, I would go for it, but just know that for rewards you have risk. Good luck!

mfranc said:

I'm wondering if donkeys are good for breaking show cattle. Ive heard stories of donkeys chewing off ears and drowning them in water. ???

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We have only used donkeys for breaking colts to lead.  We start them out in the stall together off and on a couple of times.  First time we neck them is in the stall.  After that they go into to indoor rIiding arena or the outside riding pen.  The main thing to be careful of is don't leave any buckets, feed troughs, etc where they can get hung up.  We only neck them if we are going to be around close to monitor in case something goes bad.  If you don't know your donkey very well put a muzzle on him/her just in case.  We have an older jack that will get one by the front leg and drag them around if they give him trouble.  He is maybe getting a little tired of his job.  We started a big jenny necking a couple of years ago and she is a little easier on them so we have gone to using her for younger stock.  We use a pony girth on the donkeys neck and fasten them short, if you leave to much room between them it can be problematic.  We just have a few heifers and they were broke to lead when we got then so  haven't had a chance to expirament with necking cattle yet.  We know a few poeple that show calves and they all have necking donkeys.  Denise

x^2. All good info and that's pretty much how our calves were started on the donkeys. Don't just go out and buy any donkey thinking they will work though. Just like some calves aren't meant to be show calves, some donkey's aren't meant to be breaking donkeys.

They work great ,have had a burro  around over 40 years years ,different parts of the country disagree on what to call them , we have had reeally good luck with them....We watch them pretty close when first using one, prefer the smaller ones ,they are also used a lot for team roping practice ,and training horses to heel in  team roping .....Also have trained colts to lead and work great ....Prefer to ty calf up to fence a couple hours before putting on burro ,but have put two year old bulls on a burro directly from working chute ....

definatley tie the calves up for a couple of hours spread out over a couple of days, this will take some of the pull out of them, then put them on the donkey, if you look, you can find people that raise breaking donkeys, and will have them trained a little first. make sure you put them in a place where there is nothing that they can split (one of each side). i always muzzle my donkey, and cut out any ear tags just in case. don't leave the calf on for more than an hour the first day. and make sure that there is not a pile of feed/hay in one place, if you do, the donkey probably won't move enough, lol. good donkeys are like good calves, they are born, not made.